Roy Hodgson has insisted there is plenty of cause for optimism about England’s chances before Saturday evening’s draw for the first 24-team European Championship.

Having qualified unbeaten, Hodgson has vowed England will be hard to defeat in France next summer and said that being one of the five sides alongside the hosts in pot one had boosted their chances.

“The beauty is that this good run of form has put us amongst the top seeds,” Hodgson said. “There was only five places, so it was good to get one of those five. So to be in that top pool and avoid five other very strong teams is obviously a very big advantage.”

England are in pot one with the holders Spain, the hosts, France, and the other three nations with the best Uefa coefficient rating at the end of the qualifying phase, Germany, Portugal and Belgium.

Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are in pot four, making the prospect of two of the home nations meeting one another in the finals of a major tournament for the first time since Euro 96 – when England and Scotland were in the same group – a 50-50 chance.

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“Even if you go down to the so-called weakest pool, there are lots of teams in there who are quite capable of beating the top seeds on their day,” Hodgson said. “Witness Ireland against Germany, and that was in a qualifier not even a friendly,” he added of the 1-0 victory that Martin O’Neill’s side secured over the world champions in Dublin.

“This is what we know we have there for us to confront, but it is still nicer to know that the top seeded teams we will avoid at least in the group stage.”

Hodgson entered the previous European Championship in Poland and Ukraine virtually free from expectation having succeeded Fabio Capello shortly before the tournament. At the World Cup in Brazil, England were eliminated after two matches.

The England manager, whose contract is up at the end of the tournament but who wants to carry on to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, struck a more upbeat note before the draw. With 24 teams competing, they will be drawn into six groups of four teams. The top two from each group and the four third-place teams with the best records will advance to the knockout phase.

Hodgson pointed to the fact that in 10 qualifying games England had conceded only three goals and that even in friendlies they had been hard to score against.

In their most recent friendlies England were well beaten 2-0 in Spain and overcame France at Wembley in a match where the scoreline was rendered irrelevant by its proximity to the Paris terrorist attacks.

“We’re not an easy team to score past and beat, which is good news for the future, and I think we have some very good quality players in our front six, all of whom could win a game for us, so in terms of the make-up of our team I think we have reasons for optimism,” Hodgson said. “But the Euros are a tough one to win, there are lots of teams out there who look good on paper as well.”

As he begins to consider his squad for the final run of home friendlies, at least one of which is likely to be played away from Wembley, Hodgson also said Leicester City’s in-form striker Jamie Vardy was in strong contention for a place in the starting lineup.

Hodgson was full of praise for Vardy’s feat in breaking the record for scoring in consecutive Premier League games and also praised his wider contribution to the team.

“He has done it playing very much as a team player, so his contribution outside of the goals has been quite enormous,” the coach said of the striker’s remarkable run of form, which resulted in him on Friday being named player of the month for the second consecutive time.

“You can’t get a much better contribution than match-winning goals, but he has actually done an awful lot of running, chasing, making very good runs behind defenders, constantly being a thorn in the side of every defence he has played against and working his socks off defensively for Leicester to make sure that any lead they have got, they are able to keep.”

He hinted it was Vardy’s capacity for hard work and ability to contribute defensively as well as in terms of goals that had put him in very real contention to make his preferred team in June.

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“It has been a remarkable rise and a remarkable success story and we can only hope that he can keep his form up. He won’t score in every game between now and when I select a team for the Euros. But what he can do is continue to be Jamie Vardy, playing in the way Jamie Vardy does, and that is always going to make him a very strong contender.”

The Wales coach, Chris Coleman, said he was looking to avoid England in the draw and queried why his side had ended up in pot four, among the bottom seeds.

“It is bizarre that we were top seeds for the World Cup draw and bottom seeds for this one,” he said. “When the seedings came out for this and saw we were in pot four it did seem strange.

“But I am confident with what we have got on our day – we can have a game with anyone. Some of the teams in pots above us will be looking at our form over the last two years and saying they don’t want to play us.”

Coleman said that he hoped to avoid England because the hoopla surrounding the clash would act as a distraction from their goal.

“It’s not because we are afraid of England – we respect them very much but we are not afraid of them,” he said. “I just think it would be a distraction. If you get four points you get out of the group. If we had England and had to play them first then it would be a distraction.”